A Brief History of the "1 Image 1 Minute" Project

This project is a contemporary recreation of Une Image Pour Une Minute, a project originally produced by French director Agnes Varda for presentation on French television in 1983. In Varda's version, a photographic image appeared on television (in-between network programming), and someone--a curator, photographer, or art historian--would speak about the image for one minute.


Here I have asked contemporary photographers, artists, historians, and others to select an image that has significance for them, and write or speak about it for the equivalent of 1 minute. The result is a a compelling and accessible means of gaining insight into other artists’ and photographers’ perspectives. The project is also a way of reactivating photo history, cultural literacy, and of offering a closer look at images than the mere fraction of a second that most contemporary images are afforded.

Ben Olsen


Ben Olsen
Robert Lebeck, King's Sword in Black Hand,1960

"I chose this photo not because of any particular technical or aesthetic proficiency, but because of its symbolic weight. The place was 1960 Leopoldville in (soon to be decolonialized) Congo, on a road leading to a statue of Leopold II, the king of belgium at the time when congo was colonialized. The photo shows a black member of the public who ran up to the king's car and stole his sword. It's more than being at the right place at the right time, it's more than sensational photojournalism - it's symbolic of human dignity in the face of arbitrary powers. I consider it to be one of the most powerful symbols of resistance to the structures of society that attempt to control us. Nowadays it's not as blatant as a foreign King stealing our natural resources, but much more insidious powers: consumerism, advertising, the myth of American freedom, the myth of american democracy. The man in the photo was promptly arrested, of course, it was an inherently symbolic act. But... I like to see the powers that be get Publicly Punked."
Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Micol Hebron